Page 28 - JICE Volume 7 Isssue 1 2018

Meng Yew Tee, Moses saMuel, norjoharuddeen bin Mohd nor, renuka a/p V saThasiVaM and huTkeMri
and required minimal higher order thinking. Students seem more compliant than cognitively engaged.
The practices in this third cluster contrast sharply with those in the first cluster above. While the
practices in first cluster emphasise ordering or structuring of learning experiences, the practices in
cluster three focus more on the cognitive or intellectual demands of deep or higher order thinking.
Malaysian teachers also seemed to be teaching based on the assumption that the students
understood what was being taught, as there was very little evidence of proactive monitoring of
students’ progress. The most commonly used monitoring strategy was to ask questions to elicit
evidence of student understanding. However, this was only performed in a global and general sense
without substantive impact to the instructional approach. The use of other strategies such as self
or peer assessment was also conspicuously absent.
There was also a general absence of high quality questions and discussions. Questions and
discussions, when effectively planned and facilitated, should cause students to think and reflect,
to deepen their understanding, and to test their ideas against those of their classmates. Instead,
most of the questions and discussions were narrow and almost entirely teacher-directed, with little
room for students to contribute meaningfully to the discussion. Exchanges tended to brief and
somewhat superficial, and cognitively unengaging. Questions revolved around a single right answer,
and discussions generally did not require higher order thinking.

Curriculum Implementation Practices
In terms of curriculum implementation practices of teachers, the analyses of the video data was used
to determine whether teachers had offloaded, adapted or innovated the recommended curriculum
and the supporting curriculum materials when implementing the curriculum in the classroom.
Figure 2 below shows that 89.3% (CI 84.2% - 94.4%) of teachers were found to have offloaded
instructional responsibility by relying significantly or entirely on existing recommended curriculum
and the supporting curriculum materials. About 10.0% (CI 5.0% - 15%) of teachers adapted from the
existing curriculum by adding their own design elements. The remaining 0.7% (CI 0.7% - 2.1%) of
teachers had innovated in their classroom implementation practices, using the existing curriculum
as a “seed” but eventually implemented the curriculum in novel ways.
Analyses were also conducted to determine the level of curriculum implementation practice
when teachers offloaded, adapted or innovated in the classroom. Figure 3 below presents the
results of the analyses.
Figure 3 shows that for teachers who offloaded and adapted the curriculum in the classroom,
the median level of practice was “Basic”. A total of 80.8% (CI 73.9% - 87.7%) of the teachers who
offloaded were at the “Basic” level of curriculum implementation practice. These teachers were found
to have delivered unchanged the content from the available curriculum materials, accurately but
ineffectively. The Figure 3 also shows that about 71.4% (CI 47.73% to 95.07%) of the teachers who
adapted were at the “Basic” level of curriculum implementation practice. These teachers adopted
certain elements of the curriculum materials but also contributed their own design to classroom
instruction, accurately but ineffectively. There was only one teacher in the sample who had innovated
but this teacher was found to be at the “Unsatisfactory” level of curriculum implementation practice.
This teacher was found to have delivered the content mainly with materials of his own but it was
delivered inaccurately.
The analyses of the video data were also used to determine if the teachers’ practices help
students become more aware of the Intra-disciplinary Relationship of the curriculum, the Inter-
disciplinary Relationship of the curriculum, as well as Real-world Connections (refer to Table 1).
Virtually all teachers were at the “Unsatisfactory” level of practice for these curriculum implementation
dimensions. The results indicate that 100% of the teachers were at the “Unsatisfactory” level in
helping student be more aware of the intra-disciplinary relationship of the curriculum. These
teachers’ practices had not displayed any understanding of how the content was related to the

24 Journal of International and Comparative Education, 2018, Volume 7, Issue 1